Bunuel_Luis_My_Last_Breath

Pro and Con 221side by side, one masturbating the other. Even today, I sometimeswonder if it's true that blind people are happier than the deaf. I tendto think not, yet I once knew an extraordinary blind man named LasHeras who'd lost his vision when he was eighteen and had tried manytimes to commit suicide. Finally, his parents had to lock him in hisroom and nail the shutters together. Eventually, he adjusted to hiscondition, and in the 1920s I used to see him walking the streets ofMadrid or at the Cafk Pombo on the Calle de Carretas, where Gome'zde la Serna held court. He wrote things from time to time, and usedto come with us in the evenings when we took long walks throughthe city streets.One morning, when I was living on the place de la Sorbonne inParis, Las Heras rang my doorbell. I was very surprised, to say theleast, and when I invited him in, he told me that he'd just arrivedon business, that he was by himself, and wondered if I could guidehim to a bus stop. (His French was appalling.) I put him on theright bus and watched him ride away, all alone in a city he didn'tknow and couldn't see.Jorge-Luis Borges is another blind man I don't particularly like.There's no question about the fact that he's a very good writer; butthen, the world is full of good writers, and in any case, just becausesomeone writes well doesn't mean you have to like him. Granted,I've seen Borges only two or three times, and that was sixty yearsago, but he struck me as very pretentious and self-absorbed. There'ssomething too academic (or as we say in Spanish, sienta catedra) abouteverything he says, something exhibitionistic. Like many blind people,he's an eloquent speaker, albeit the subject of the Nobel Prizetends to crop up obsessively each time he talks to reporters. In thisrespect, it's revealing to contrast Borges and Jean-Paul Sartre, insofaras the former is clearly counting on that prize while the latter refusedboth prize and money.Whenever I think of blind men, I can't help remembering thewords of Benjamin Pkret, who was very concerned about whethermortadella sausage was in fact made by the blind. I find this less a